


Champion

by AssortedGeekery



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-15
Packaged: 2018-05-20 19:57:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6022795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssortedGeekery/pseuds/AssortedGeekery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's the most confusing, wonderful, beautiful woman Rude has ever had the misfortune to fight with. And he really feels like she could do better than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Champion

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired ENTIRELY by THIS gorgeous piece of art: http://katekaion.tumblr.com/image/87308871002
> 
> And for KittenFair, without whom I would no longer be writing fic at all. 
> 
> Written in less than 2 hours over a pinon latte and a breakfast sandwich. 
> 
> It's really wonderful to know that I didn't forget how to do this. Big thank you to everyone who still reads me.

Back then, it was just a crush, something Reno teased him mercilessly about. It wasn’t like she was a _baby_ , not even jailbait, and she was a far sight better than some of the girls he’d been hot for in the past. Hell, she beat a great number of Reno’s conquests without even trying. (But then again, Reno was all about the fun to be had behind closed doors and Rude preferred the public part.)

Reno teased, of course, because she was the enemy. Cloud had been one of their own, all the Turks were fully aware of who Cait Sith really was, and no matter how lovely she was, in the end Tifa was their enemy and it didn’t do anyone any good to moon about her. 

They would have to kill her eventually. No matter of sneaky wriggling around the literal translation of orders would get them out of that. 

——

The end of the world might, though. 

Okay, so it hadn’t been the end of the world in truth, but it was the end of the world as they knew it. With Tseng and Rufus and a team of medical staff in tow, what remained of the Turks fled for safety and obscurity. 

Rude had Tifa’s wanted poster in his wallet, folded up to the size of a gil note and tucked safely in his back pocket. He fetched it out on the nights he didn’t have duty and wondered why guys like Cloud had all the luck. Even Elena had a few things to say about the little blond, and they were very appreciative things indeed. 

——

Three years later, Rude found himself fighting on the side of the righteous for a change. Half his mission was spent coaching Cloud along, which got under his skin. 

Cloud was still with Tifa. 

Cloud didn’t seem to have _done_ anything about that. There was no sign of courtship. No sign of marriage. She had two orphans she was raising and Cloud had brought one of them in, but they weren't  _his_ children. Rude had never seen any kind of affection beyond that of childhood friends. 

None of the remaining members of Avalanche had laid claim to her either. 

 

She was twenty four and beautiful and so very, very single. A crime, really. She deserved someone who could give her more than just the financial support Cloud had to offer. (Everyone who knew Tifa was fully aware that she didn’t keep Cloud around to protect the bar. She could do that just fine, thank you, with nothing more than her fists, her good leather fighting gloves and a sturdy pair of boots.)

 

When the battle was over, somehow they all crammed into 7th Heaven, Avalanche and Shinra and Cloud still dripping wet from the church.

Rude sat at the end of the bar, back against the wall, nursing a beer and nursing his wounds. Reno was making a fuss- as Reno did, because he was so very good at getting himself the attention he craved- and had been taken care of, but Rude remained untouched and untreated. When he returned to his cramped quarters he would strip his suit off and tend what wounds he could manage. In the morning, there would be a visit from Rufus’ doctor anyway and he could see about the rest of his injuries then.

The beer was good, but not a brand he was familiar with. Rude considered himself a beer fan, having grown up helping his uncles in the brew house when he wasn’t helping his father in the bakery, and recognized all the hallmarks of a truly fine ale. It goes down smooth and fills his senses with aroma and layers of flavor. He needs to get the brand. He needs this stuff in his quarters. He _really_ needs it with a good steak and some even better vegetables.

“No label,” a voice said behind him. He nearly choked on his drink, half embarrassed that he had been snuck up on, half impressed. 

But it was Tifa behind him, which was no surprise. 

“No label?” he managed, voice thick with the near miss. It would have been a shame to inhale such a good ale and choke on it. 

 “Just my name,” she murmured. 

Rude blinked at her, processing. _Her_ name. _Her_ beer. 

“You made this?”

“Women make the beer in the north,” she explained, placing a heavy-sounding case on the bartop. “My mother was an alewife. She passed her recipes on to me. I’ve changed them a little, for my taste and Midgar’s, but she taught me.”

“And bread? Is that a woman’s job as well?” he ventured. 

She _laughed_ at him. 

“Breadbaking is a man’s job. You’d have to ask Cloud if he remembers any of the recipes he learned. He picked them up all over the village, with no father to pass any down to him. Take your shirt off.”

That time he _did_ choke, spluttering while Tifa laughed. She reached for his tie while he coughed, sliding the knot loose and giving a tug to send it slithering free from his collar. She coiled this slowly in her hands while he collected himself, lips quirked in a halfsmile. 

“ _What_?”

“Take your shirt off. I’m done with Reno and I know you’re at least half as beat up as he is.”

“I’ll be fine,” Rude mumbled into his glass. 

“Yes, you will be,” she agreed. Then she raised a hand and brought it down in a light, open-palmed slap across the back of Rude’s shoulder. He didn’t quite manage to swallow the pained yelp. “But you aren’t right now. Take your shirt off or I’ll ask Vincent to bring his gauntlet over here and _cut it off_. He’s done it for me, you know. He can be very delicate with those claws.”

Just the _thought_ had Rude struggling out of his coat and shirt as fast as he could without whimpering. Anything that wasn’t actually injured was sore and overworked in the worst of ways and he was already stiffening up. Had this been Midgar _before_ Meteorfall, he would have paid extra for a private tub at one of the bathhouses that had popped up both above and below the Plate. They might have been at war with Wutai, back then, but the culture and the people were ever popular. The bathhouses were what Rude missed the most- even the private tubs were large enough for him to soak in all the way up to his neck. 

“You need to be more flexible,” Tifa remarked, opening the case. It held more first aid supplies than Rude’s own did and he made a few mental notes on what to add to his when he got back to it. “In the shoulders, anyway. Was that a suplex you tried on the big Remnant?”

“Modified,” he mumbled, watching her lean over the bar for hot water and a clean towel. “Didn’t work.”

“The modification? It looked like it would have, if he hadn’t seen you coming.”

“But he saw me coming.”

Tifa raised an eyebrow as she wrung her towel out and applied it to the back of Rude’s shoulder. The heat felt wonderful, but it also woke up the nerves in the serious case of road rash he had all over his back. He cringed. “He was part of _Sephiroth_. I went after him once, years ago, and he swatted me like a bug, Rude. You’ll notice that Reno got his ass handed to him by a Remnant too.”

Rude nodded faintly. He’d gotten lucky with his. If Loz had been more inclined to use weapons instead of fists, his speed would have had Rude dead on the pavement in minutes.

“Have you ever tried it on someone who _wasn’t_ a semi-reincarnation of one of the strongest warriors the Planet has ever seen?” she asked, spraying something sharp-smelling on his back. Whatever it was, it stung, and it burned when she began scrubbing dried blood off his skin. 

“Couple of times,” he admitted. “Worked pretty well. But not if there’s a crowd.”

Tifa nodded, mopping at him with the towel again. “Because you have to get back up and you’re vulnerable then.” 

“Yeah.”

“Good finisher, though. I don’t have the mass to pull that off.”

“And I don’t have the legs to kick someone through a wall,” he pointed out.

Tifa laughed. The sound warmed Rude to the core. 

“We all have our specialities.”

 

She brought him another beer when she was done with him, and a tumbler full of what turned out to be chocolate pudding whipped with rum as an apology for making him strip his slacks off as well. She insisted it was on the house, but Rude managed to leave a very generous tip with the insistence that no one should have to deal with his feet after a full day in his work shoes and _not_ be paid. (He was also down three toenails now, but he didn’t want to think about that.)

 

There must have been something in the salve she’d plastered all over his back. By evening the following day, he was already at the itchy, nearly healed stage. 

 

——

Rufus came back to Midgar after that, with Reeve and the WRO at his back, pushing reconstruction and revitalization. The center of the city was cordoned off as unsafe and left to salvage crews armed to the teeth with weapons and hackers to get past any guard digital or physical that might have stood in their way. 

The Turks set to their new position as Rufus’ guards and advisors as well as they could, forging out into the city when they weren’t on Rufus-duty to scout and gather information. 

As they spread, the Old Ones began coming back. Rude ran into Nunchaku in 7th Heaven of all places, praising Tifa’s brew with a vocabulary and knowledge of brewing that told the truth of the age behind that baby face. 

Reno wandered into a morning shift with coffee and doughnuts and Rod at his side, carrying more pastries. 

With more hands at the shaky wheel of NeoShinra, things began to even out and Rude could spend a little more time at 7th Heaven in the evenings, drinking whatever Tifa handed him and watching her patrons. 

She tried to trade his inadvertent function as bouncer for his drinks, but Rude always paid. 

——

Three weeks after Tifa’s twenty-fifth birthday (Rude had bought her boxing equipment and argued that she shouldn’t have to fight for the space at a local gym when she already had enough to do), Rude was at the bar again, watching the kids run to greet Cloud as he staggered in after what Rude assumed was a long delivery run. 

Tifa went and greeted him too, kissing his cheek before shooing him upstairs. She caught Rude looking as she turned back to the bar and raised an eyebrow, working her way back down the bar to stand across from him. 

“Something wrong?”

Rude had been there awhile already. He was by no means drunk, but he had had enough to maybe get away with speaking his mind. 

“Why do you stay with him?” he asked, staring into his drink. 

“….why do I what?”

“He doesn’t love you as a woman. He loves you as a friend.”

Tifa planted her hands on her hips and leveled a hard stare at Rude. It beat Elena’s glare by a long shot. 

“And what do you think I need instead? A lover to sweep me off my feet? A prince? Someone to keep me like a lady?”

Rude looked up. “You _deserve_ a champion,” he said firmly. 

 ——

Rude would have liked to say that she vaulted the bar then and kissed him until they could make it upstairs to her bedroom, but in reality, she didn’t need to get over the bar in order to punch him. Her reach was more than enough. 

He finished the rest of his beer anyway, though the blood in his mouth rather spoiled the taste, and left the usual payment under his glass before heading back to his new apartment and called Reno for the oral anesthetic Reno (who got slapped pretty often) kept around for such injuries.

——

 He didn’t go back to the bar for nearly a month. Clearly, he’d overstepped. 

It was _Legend_ , of all people, notorious ladies man that he was, who eventually chased Rude back to 7th Heaven. He crept inside and nervously took his customary seat in the corner. Cloud’s bike was in the side yard, so the blond was somewhere in the area. The Shera had landed outside town the day before, which meant that Cid was around as well, and likely others. 

If he was unwelcome, he was likely to know _quickly_.

Instead, Tifa slid a heavy glass across to him, and pushed a bowl of snacks after it.

“Why a champion?” she asked quietly. 

“You don’t need to be _kept_ ,” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes. “You shouldn’t be. No one has that right. But you should have someone who would fight _for_ you. For…for the _right_ to be yours.”

She was quiet for a few very long minutes. Rude sipped his beer and sampled the snacks. They were good, and tasted homemade. There was a little chile on them, a soft burn at the back of his throat. 

“Why would he need to do that?”

Rude raised an eyebrow. 

“Any moron who thinks he can touch you just because you’re a beautiful woman isn’t worth the dirt under your boots. Any woman should get to choose.”

“And you think Cloud doesn’t have the right?”

“Are you defending him because he’s your lover or because I’m right and you don’t want to admit it?”

“He’s my best friend.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that. Reno’s my best friend. You don’t see me defending _his_ honor.”

Tifa’s stance softened. She pulled Rude’s bowl back across the bar and picked a few pieces of out it. “And if Cloud wasn’t my partner…why would you care?”

Rude took a long swallow of his beer before he answered, knowing it might full well be the last one he got. 

“I might have a chance if I wasn’t up against him, is all.”

Tifa picked a few more pieces out of the bowl. 

“I have tomorrow off and I’m going to the market in Edge. Come with me. Be here at six.”

“In the _morning_?”

“If you’re here at six in the evening then you’ll have missed your chance. Beer’s on the house.”

——

The school bus picked up Marlene and Denzel down the block from 7th Heaven just after seven in the morning. It was a yawning Cloud Strife and an equally sleepy Cid Highwind chasing them down the street to catch it, and it was Vincent Valentine, entirely unruffled and immaculate, who strode down the street after them with their forgotten lunchboxes. Yuffie ran after him, brandishing Denzel’s gym shoes.

 

In an apartment across town, Rude was attempting to get ready for work. His progress was hindered by the fact that his sunglasses were evading capture. 

Even butt-naked and without a morning coffee, Tifa was fast. She cornered better than Rude did and so kept just enough distance between them to lead him in a merry chase all over the apartment, his sunglasses perched on her head. (They were too big to stay on the bridge of her nose and had slid down to her chin a couple of times before she had pushed them up to the to of her head.)

“I _need_ those,” Rude insisted, blocking the bedroom doorway in an effort to keep her in one place. He deeply regretted not replacing it after she had slammed him through it two weeks ago. He was in the market for an apartment with walls that stood up to a little more roughhousing. (He was _so_ not getting his deposit back for this place.)

“And I need _you_ ,” she countered, considering his stance. She leaned to the right, then leapt left as Rude moved to catch her, fully intending to get over his leg and back into the hallway, but Rude met her halfway, driving her back into the room and in a sprawl onto the bed. 

Unfortunately for Rude, she still managed to get her leg around his and yanked, pulling herself sideways and tangling him in the sheets while she rolled to the side, glasses in one hand and well out of his reach. 

Rude groaned and sat up, looking down at her while she giggled, sprawled over the deep red sheets with his bite mark on her hip and his glasses in her hand. 

“What am I supposed to do with you now?” he asked. 

“Call in late. I have to work tonight and this is _my_ morning.” She reached up with her free hand and trailed her fingers down from his throat to his navel with just enough pressure to remind him that this woman could match in everything except sheer body weight. “Reno does it all the time.”

“I’m _not_ Reno.”

Tifa’s fingers moved to the rough, puckered scar from an old bullet wound on his thigh. “No, you _really_ aren’t. I’m so glad….”

“Why?” 

“ _Because.”_

Tifa stretched a little further to put the glasses on top of the headboard, freeing her hands up, and reached for him with both, pressing them against his chest. Rude had a moment to lean into her touch, relishing the strength in her hands, before a little pressure became a hard shove and he fell onto his back.. She grinned, swinging a leg over his body and perching on his chest. 

“I’d break his neck doing this.”

Rude laughed, hooking his hands behind her knees. “No, you’d break his ribs from there,” he corrected, pulling her forward with a firm hitch. “Now from _here_ ….yeah, you’d probably break his neck. Or at least his jaw.”

 Tifa leaned into his hold, resting one hand on the headboard for support. “You aren’t going to be making a phone call down there, you know.”

He grinned at that, nuzzling at her with an appreciative sound “Phone’s up there. Guess you’ll have to do it for me.”

Tifa looked down at him, eyebrow raised. 

“You want me to call your boss while you eat me out.”

 “I never said you had to call my _boss_. You could always remind Reno why I’m the luckiest guy on the Planet and _he_ can call my boss.”

“Better get to work, then. We can’t disappoint him.”

 


End file.
